Posted on 21 November 2013

Update 2: Microsoft reached out with a statement. The issue with Azure was seperate from the other outages. Early reports to the contrary were false. I apologize for getting that wrong.

Here’s Microsoft statement:

“Microsoft is aware of issues involving cloud and online services and we are investigating the cause. We can confirm that these issues were not caused by Windows Azure. We will keep our customers updated as information becomes available. The service interruption that affected Windows Azure Storage was a separate issue and has been resolved. All Windows Azure services are running as normal.”

Update 1: Things are back to normal, it appears. So you can now Netflix on your Xbox to your heart’s content. Still no word from Microsoft on what went down. More as we have it.

Reports surfaced recently that Xbox Live had gone dark. Other Microsoft services have followed. The problems appear to stem from Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure, which is the brains for many Microsoft services.

According to the Windows Azure Services Dashboard, there is at least a problem with some Azure storage services, which is marked as present at suffering from “Performance Degradation.”

Azure is a growing product for Microsoft, with revenue over the billion dollar mark. It is also a core component of the New Microsoft, in which services replace traditional software. Those services more often than not run on Azure. If it goes down, it takes quite a bit with it.

I have several calls into Microsoft asking what’s up, and the like. They are likely still figuring it out for themselves. I cannot confirm at this time the extent of what is down, but I’m hearing that TechNet is scuppered, some people can’t get email, and so forth. This could take a while, folks, so put on your Patience Hat.

However, while Microsoft rights its ship and tells us what went down, at least there is time for jokes:

@alex Do you think Google will make t-shirts and cups about Azure went down?

Posted on 04 September 2013

A number of Twitter users apparently noticed Tuesday evening that their personal photo avatars had been abruptly replaced by the default “egg” image that accompanies profiles from users who haven’t added a custom photo of themselves.

What’s happened to all those artfully posed selfies? Was all that time constructing a flattering yet also somehow self-deprecating and goofy profile image in vain? What if Justin Bieber turns into an egg? Let’s all knock on wood and hope that we never find out — and that the images are restored soon.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for an eggsplanation of what’s happened, and when and how it will be resolved. We will update this post with information as soon as we hear back.

Update: Twitter has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix.

Some avatars are appearing as eggs and users are unable to update profiles. We are working to resolve this. Thank you for your patience!—

Posted on 17 January 2013

While it’s not the “fail whale” that became popular in years past, Twitter.com is indeed having some issues. According to a tweet by its support account, engineers are working on a “rendering” issue. A lot of Twitter users rely on mobile and desktop apps, so they might not visit the website at all.

For those of you who do, though, the problem is impossible to miss. Refresh a few times, and every other page-load or so doesn’t have CSS rendering within your browser.

This rendering issue means that Twitter’s site isn’t showing up in its full, beautiful, glory:

We are experiencing intermittent problems with twitter.com rendering properly. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Patience is one of the seven virtues, the lesser-known cousins of the seven sins. And indeed, “patience is a virtue” – or so goes the saying. But another saying states that “fortune favors the bold.” So which one is it?

It’s not that patience isn’t valued; it’s that no one else is actually all that patient. Whether you are growing a business or chasing a girl or trying to lose weight or auditioning on American Idol, no one will sit around and wait for results.

They will be impatient. This doesn’t mean you should be impatient, it just means that in the words of George Jackson: “Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.”

Success is Most Definitely a Target, Albeit a Moving One

Regardless of what drives you and how you define it, people care about the outcome of your efforts and not the journey; frankly, the experience you gain throughout your journey is really only of value to you. But since we have limited needs but infinite wants, we tend to compete with everybody for the spoils. As such, if you think that you will be rewarded for your patience, you’re a sucker, and will end up a loser.

This Ain’t The Super Bowl

It’s commonplace to use sports analogies in business, I do it all the time. But whereas in sports you compete with one or multiple individuals or teams, in business you ultimately compete against yourself: Apple really didn’t care that much about Research In Motion’s Blackberry.

Once you venture into a business, you need to put enough points on the board and then manage the clock (told you I liked sports analogies). To do that you need to get ahead.

People who Preach Patience are Patronizing You

“We are telling the American people to have patience, courage, resolve and determination” Muammar Gaddafi.

Oftentimes those who urge you to remain patient are in fact patronizing you. As football coach Steve Spurrier said: ”If people like you too much, it’s probably because they’re beating you”.

Be honest: how often has someone you looked up to told you that if you basically sat on your ambition and dreams they’d eventually open doors for you.

How often did they deliver? Let me jog your memory: never. If they did, it’s because you posed no threat to them. You will be successful despite those people, not because of them.

Life is a Big Game of Musical Chairs

All of this Tony Robbins-esque talk is nice, but how does it help you:

If you see an opening for a job, don’t sit still. No one will pull you aside and offer you the gig. Go for it. No one will think any lesser of you for going after the ball. They’ll respect you, albeit reluctantly.

Don’t wait to close that round of funding before tackling the big opportunities you see; make it happen to the best of your abilities.

Now, A Word of Caution

1) Balance is everything in life. Too much impatience never helped anyone. I can list 100 quotes to that effect.

2) Shortcuts get a bad rep, but they’re there for a reason. Those who fail to take advantage of them are in fact, ironically, lazy or unimaginative.

3) Nothing replaces tact, dignity, respect and diplomacy. It’s fine to press the pedal to the metal, but treat people the way you want to be treated.

4) Wearing your ambition on your sleeve is a recipe to get cut off at the knees; hence the Russian quote “The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe”.

5) If you’re perceived as too brazen and ballsy then you won’t even know whose butt you should kiss since no one will give you the time of day to start off with.

6) Reduced patience only means heightened risk. You can score by moving down the field 10-yards at a time or throwing a Hail Mary. Clearly, one comes with more danger.

7) Nothing can replace preparation and practice.

The Paradox of Patience

Of course, patience is in itself not static. For example,

Once you have children, suddenly you become more patient, but ruthlessly, you have less time to spare for those who waste your time.

As you become more successful in life, you become more comfortable to let the clock run out.

When it’s over and done: if you want to end up in a better position than where you started, then burn the playbook they give you and write you own.

Posted on 16 July 2010

On July 13, three days ago, France launched France.fr to give the world a multilingual website with information about the country. It shortly went down. And stayed down. Today we checked back in to see how the little site was doing. Not so well, it turns out.

This is more than a mild embarrassment for France’s senior government official overseeing the Internet, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. When the site launched she tweeted out “Lancement aujourd’hui du portail officiel de la France dans le monde” (“Today’s launch of official website of France in the world”). She’s been rather quiet since then.

We’ll let you know if/when the French government is able to make the site live. If the country’s experience with building aircraft carriers is any indication of their ability to build websites, we should see it limping along sometime in 2013.

Bonus link: click the flag.

Update: Huh. they did manage to change the site is down message though. It used to say it was a victim of its own success, or something similar. Now it says, roughly “The team France.fr regret not being able to help you find the gate of France. We are currently facing a problem configuring our servers. We have undertaken an audit of all systems to allow us to reopen as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and very quick!”

Posted on 31 May 2010

Apple has just announced that sales of its tablet computer iPad have now topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. That’s a whole lot of iPads in under two months, and the company only started shipping units to customers in countries outside the United States last weekend.

“Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”

Apple in a statement said developers have created over 5,000 new apps for iPad to date.

In a week, Jobs will be front and center at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco – the man’s keynote starts on Monday 7 June at 10 AM PST.

Posted on 06 May 2010

A week ago, many Google Calendar users were affected by an extended outage. Today, it’s down again, and this time it’s affecting the majority of users. And it’s been going on for well over an hour now. Ugh.

We’ve reached out to Google to see what the issue is this time (and why this keeps happening) and will update when we hear back. The Google App Status Dashboard has two updates so far. At 8:30 they wrote:

We’re aware of a problem with Google Calendar affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Calendar. We will provide an update by May 6, 2010 9:00:00 AM UTC-7 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

And then at 9:00 they wrote:

Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by May 6, 2010 9:30:00 AM UTC-7 with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.

While the web page for Calendar appears to be loading, none of the actual calendar data is.

All services have downtime from time to time (cable, the phone company, etc), the problem is that Google is trying to get everyone to trust that they can move all their data to the cloud. When a pattern of downtime keeps occurring, obviously, that’s going to be a harder sell.

Update: A new update on the App Status Dash says that they’re still looking into the issue:

Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by May 6, 2010 10:00:00 AM UTC-7 with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.

Update 2: Google has updated the Dashboard again saying the issues has been resolved. Here’s the message:

The problem with Google Calendar should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

Additionally, Google got back to me, pointing to this page for a full report about last week’s outage (see the PDF linked to on that page).